1. Field
The field relates to visual information systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for reconnecting to a remote viewing session which is configured to transmit information shown on one participant's screen to one or more geographically dispersed viewers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephones enable people to communicate verbally, but do not enable participants to a telephone call to exchange visual information with each other. Conventionally, when visual information such as a PowerPoint (™ Microsoft Corporation) presentation or a document was to be referenced during a telephone conversation, the visual information would be faxed, e-mailed, or otherwise physically sent to the participants so that the participants could have the reference materials available during the telephone call.
As technology evolved, software was developed to allow information being shown on one computer screen (display information), such as a computer monitor screen, to be made visible on another person's computer screen at a geographically dispersed location. Software of this nature will be referred to herein as “Remote Viewing Software” (RVS).
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a typical way in which remote viewing of one person's screen information may take place using a RVS system. As shown in FIG. 1, a first participant 10 may desire to allow information 12 appearing on a their screen 14 and associated with a their machine 16, to be made available to another person 18 at a remote location. To do so, RVS software 20 on the display machine 16 will capture the screen information 12 and pass it over a network 22 to the viewer's machine 24. An instantiation of the RVS software 26 (which may be the same as RVS software 20 or a different i.e. limited version of RVS software 20) will decode the received screen information to reproduce the screen information 12 as viewer screen information 28 that will be caused to appear on the viewer's display screen 30. A remote viewing service 32 may be provided to support viewing sessions on the network. A combination of the display machine 16 and display screen 14 will collectively be referred to herein as a “display” 34, since their information is being “displayed” to the viewers on the RVS session. The display machine 16 and display screen 14 may be separate devices or integrally formed. Similarly, a combination of a viewer's machine 24 and screen 30 will collectively be referred to herein as a “viewer” 36 since this is the entity that will receive the host screen information to be “viewed” on the session. The viewer's machine and screen, like the display, may be separate devices or integrally formed.
By looking at the recreated screen information 28 on the viewer's screen 30, the viewer 18 may thus see a reproduction of the screen information 12. A remote viewing session over which the display screen information is transmitted may be hosted by the display machine 16 or, optionally, the remote viewing service 32 may assume a portion of the tasks required to host the session.
When the system of FIG. 1 is in use, the display participant may cause a desired visual presentation to appear on the viewer's screen 30 simply by causing the desired visual presentation to appear as part of the screen information on the display screen. Since the participant 10 is able to control the display and, hence, the content that is shown on the display screen, the participant 10 may control the content that is made to appear on the viewer's screen. Reference may then be made to the shared information to enable more effective communication to take place between the participants.
Remote Viewing Software (RVS) tools vary significantly in their complexity. For example, some RVS tools require all participants to have special purpose RVS software installed on their machines, firewalls custom configured to enable traffic to pass over the networks, and require extensive training. Other RVS tools are much simpler to use, such as the RVS tool developed by Glance Networks™. Occasionally, due to network or other conditions, an established remote viewing session may be dropped or otherwise compromised. Accordingly, it may be desirable to allow the viewers and displays to reconnect to an established remote viewing session.